Education Commons^™

Infusing Undergraduate Scholarship Into Teacher Education, Tunde Szecsi, Hasan Aydin

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

Students majoring in education are underrepresented in undergraduate scholarship. To enable teacher candidates to develop and demonstrate their skills in scholarly activities and products, we implemented a well-orchestrated infusion of problem-solving, critical thinking, oral and written communication, collaboration into courses.

In this presentation, we will describe this systematic course-based infusion of scholarly endeavors with examples from courses. In addition, during the past three years, annually we assessed teacher candidates’ scholarly products for critical thinking, informational literacy and writing. Here we will share what we learned from the data, and how we used it to strengthen undergraduate scholarship for future teachers.

Leading Students To Empower Their Peers In Undergraduate Research, Aubrey A. Kuperman, Colleen Smith, Tracy Baker, Jodiene Johnson

Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

UCF and FAU’s offices of undergraduate research have three separate opportunities for current undergraduate researchers to assume a leadership role and assist their peers in getting started in research. This presentation will lay out the three models, at each institution, for student leadership in undergraduate research: peer mentors/ student teaching assistants, student assistants who host peer mentor advising hours throughout the academic year, and student councils who focus on outreach across campus and serve in an advisory capacity. This session will provide an overview of these programs on the two campuses.